Lake Neuron

Well, since I haven’t shown up the past couple of weeks, Cascade High School’s football team has regained its winning ways, with a 35-13 first-round playoff win tonight against Collinwood.

Originally, I had planned to stay home Friday night and finish studying for layspeaking class. But it had been such a long week, and my sister had driven up from Linden so that she and my nephew could go to the Cascade / Jo Byrns game. I decided to go with them. We enjoyed the outing, although obviously we were disappointed that Cascade lost.

Layspeaking class went very well today, and we stayed as scheduled within the first three chapters of the book, so I didn’t miss anything by going to the ball game. Jackie Clevenger is a great teacher, and it’s a really great group. I volunteered to do our opening devotional for the second half of the class next Saturday.

I got home tonight and did some polish work on my sermon for Cannon UMC for tomorrow. I printed out a copy, then read through it, then made a few more changes. I went to print out another copy and my ink cartridges ran out. So I dropped them off at Walgreens for re-filling (cheaper than a new cartridge but easier and — I hope — more reliable than filling them myself). Walgreens is close to my parents’ house, so I stopped by to see everyone. My sister and two of her three kids spent last night and were still there; they’ll leave later tonight. I watched more episodes of “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” than a single, 45-year-old man should be forced to watch.

Eventually, I returned home, stopping by Walgreens to pick up the filled cartridges.

Well, the Champions are now 8-0, with their second shutout in a row and their third of the season. They have outscored their opponents 317-54. But it’s all prelude to next week, when they will face the other unbeaten team in Region 5A, Jo Byrns. (I assume they’re still unbeaten, although tonight’s score hasn’t posted yet at the TSSAA web site.)

UPDATE: I stand corrected! Jo Byrns lost tonight, leaving Cascade in sole possession of the Region 5A lead.

The Cascade Champions are now 6-0, guaranteed a winning season, and have outscored their opponents by a total of 225 to 54.

The 4-0 Cascade Champions have outscored their opponents so far by a total of 149-40.

I’m over guest blogging at Music City Bloggers this weekend, by the way, so please stop by and see me there.

The county where I live has three public high schools. There’s the big one in Shelbyville, and two rural schools: Community, in the northwest part of the county, and Cascade, my alma mater, in the northeast part.

Cascade has had a football program ever since I was in school in the late 1970s. I don’t follow high school sports that closely, but I do have enough fond feelings for my alma mater to have some vague sense of how they’re doing in a given year. For most of the 426 years since my graduation, our football program was not real successful. Last year, however, we had a great year and were ranked among the highest in the state in Class A. We’re highly ranked again this year.

Community, on the other hand, went for years without a football program. They started freshman football a few years ago and have their first-ever varsity program this year.

Naturally, tonight’s first-ever gridiron meeting between the two schools has been a topic of discussion all week. Last night, at the school board meeting, Amy Martin, who represents Community’s district, brought a Vikings jersey and hung it in front of her place at the conference table. She had some good-natured banter with Dixie Parker, who represents Cascade’s district (and whose son is Cascade’s coach).

As a loyal alum, I naturally wanted Cascade to preserve its unbeaten record and good ranking. But I also knew that the natural rivalry between the two schools might serve to fire up the underdog and I thought it might be a closer game than the schools’ records and statistics would indicate.

I needn’t have worried. The final score, according to the TSSAA web site, was Cascade 62, Community 19.

On a couple of different occasions, my oldest nephew has attended a football camp hosted by Shelbyville’s own former NFL player Jim “Pork Chop” Mitchell. It was a terrific camp, with Mitchell and some of his friends stressing sportsmanship and discipline, not just knowledge. Both times, I got to go to the closing luncheon and hear Mitchell and some of the other presenters.

Anyway, former T-G sports editor Bo Melson has been working to get Mitchell enshrined in the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame and has blogged about it at his new T-G blog.